Mischief

by Ed McBain

  They both realized in the same instant that they were looking into the man’s home.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Meyer mumbled.

  “It’s a mistake,” Hawes said.

  “Sorry,” Meyer said.

  The man closed the flaps on the carton, picked it up again, and began walking up the street, struggling with its weight.

  They almost felt like helping him.

  “I WANTED YOUto hear this without any background noise,” Silver said.

  Chloe figured this was like being invited up to some guy’s apartment to see his etchings. He’d called her twenty minutes ago, asked if she could stop by on her way to rehearsal. He still thought she worked with some kind of dance group, she’d been pretty vague about whatkind of dance. It was now ten-forty, she was due at the club at eleven. She hoped he hadn’t picked tonight to make his move, hoped he reallydid want her to hear this song he’d written. She’d pretty much decided she’d go to bed with him sooner or later, but there were things she had to sort out first.

  Like, for example, why she hadn’t yet quit the job.

  Why hadn’t she just marched in, said So long, Tony, it was nice getting groped all these months, and thanks for the use of the hall, but I’ve got twenty grand in the bank now, and what I’m going to do is open a beauty parlor.

  Simple thing to do, right?

  So why hadn’t she done it?

  Something scary about it, she guessed. Going out on her own. Easier to suffer the hands on her. Easier to…

  “Nice thing about rap, I can accompany myself,” he said, and grinned.

  His apartment was on a stretch of turf that used to be called Honey Lane when Diamondback was in its heyday. Lots of rich and respectable black people used to live right here on this street. The brownstones lining Honey Lane were as fancy as any you could find on the Upper South Side of Isola. Stained-glass panels set in mahogany entrance doors. Polished brass door-knobs and knockers. Sweeping carpeted stairways. This was back when Mr. Charlie came uptown to listen to jazz and watch the high-yeller chicks strutting in their little beaded dresses. Diamondback wasthe place to go back then.

  Dope hit Diamondback long before it hit the rest of America, right after the War—thereal war, not the miniseries in the Gulf. There were many blacks—and Chloe Chadderton was one of them—who believed that dope was the white man’s way of keeping the nigger in his place. Spread dope in all the black hoods, the way the British used to do when they were running China, and you subjugated the people, you made sure theynever got any power. The fat black cats in Diamondback ran for the hills when dope came in, sold out and left for the suburbs, same aswhites did wheneverblacks moved in, it was kind of funny. Now Diamondback was a war zone. Half a century of indifference and you had teenagers clocking for big-time dealers and doing crack themselves.

  Which was maybe why Chloe was scared of going out there on her own. In a white man’s bar, on a white man’s table top, with a white man’s hands all over her, she sometimes felt…safe. Cared for. Protected. This was what they’d done to her. In the long run, she was still a slave, still afraid to take that leap into freedom.

  “It’s called ‘Black Woman,’” Sil said.

  “Takeoff on ‘Sister Woman’?” she asked, and was immediately sorry.

  His face fell.

  “Well…no,” he said. “‘Sister Woman’ is somethin else, Chloe. ‘Sister Woman’ was your husband’sbleat , his way of protestin before rap was even adream in anybody’s head. You want to know what rap is, it’s calypso without melody, straight out of the West Indies, never mind Africa. That’s why ‘Sister Woman’ fits in so good with what we do. Spit Shine is purerhythm , and your husband’s lyrics got the beat of the drums in them, right up front, hell, he coulda been writin his words specially for us. But ‘Black Woman’…”

  “I didn’t mean you ripped it off,” she said. “I’m sorry if you…”

  “No, no, all I’m tryin’a splain is how the two raps are different. ‘Sister Woman’ is a rap we got fromcalypso , but ‘Black Woman’ is somethin I pulled out of rhythm and blues. Well you’ll see what I mean when you hear it.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “On Saturday, we start the act with your husband’s song, new rap for the group, they sit up and take notice the minute we open our mouths. Then we do ‘Hate,’ which was a hit they all know, and which is just what it says it is, man, it’s abouthate , pure and simple. And then we do ‘Black Woman.’ Which is about love. R and B is always about love. And lovers,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said again.

  “Would you like to hear it?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I told you, Sil, I have to be at the…the rehearsal starts at…”

  “That’s cool, don’t worry,” he said, and grinned, and sat at the table and began beating out a rhythm with the palms of his hands, the gut rhythm of rap, an intricate clickety rhythm that made her want to move her feet in response, a rhythm as immediate as a bulletin from the front. Over the beat of his hands on the tabletop, he began the rap he’d written last Saturday:

  “Black woman, black woman, oh yo eyes so black,

  “Tho yo skin wants some color, why isthat , tell me that.

  “Why isthat , black woman, don’t confuse me tonight,

  “You confusin me, woman, you confusin me quite,

  “Cause youlook so white

  “When Iknow you black.”

  “Black woman, black woman, is you white or black?

  “Is youquite black, woman, don’t confuse me tonight,

  “You confusin me, woman, I’m a’taken aback

  “Cause youlook so white

  “When Iknow you black.”

  “Now you know where I stand, cause you know how I look, you been hearin my rap, you been readin my book.

  “You can see in my hand all the cards I can play, you can read in my eyes all the things I can say.

  “Do you spec me to lose all them centuries past,

  “Do you spec me to worship at yo lily-white ass?

  “Do you spec me to love all that’s white that’s within you?

  “Do you spec me to love all thewhite man that’s in you?

  “Well, I will.”

  “Black woman, white woman, gonna love you so,

  “Be you black, be you white, even so, that is so,

  “That isthat , white woman, no confusion tonight,

  “No confusion, black woman, I’m forgettin the white,

  “In the night, in the night,

  “All is black, all is white

  “Love the black, love the white,

  “Love thewoman tonight.”

  His hands stopped their erratic rhythm on the tabletop. He looked at her very solemnly.

  “That’s…lovely,” she said.

  “I wrote it for you,” he said.

  She had thought so.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She had thought that, too.

  She went into his arms. They kissed. She could feel his heart pounding in his chest. In a little while, she would call the club to tell Tony Eden she was quitting. There was no hurry.

  AT SEVEN-THIRTYon the morning of April third, just as Chloe and Sil were sitting down to breakfast at the small kitchen table in his apartment facing Grover Park, a British nanny was wheeling a baby carriage into the playground near Silvermine Oval, close to the River Harb, on the northernmost edge of the 87th Precinct.

  An old man was sitting on one of the benches.

  He was wearing pajamas and a robe, and he was wrapped in a khaki-colored blanket.

  His hair was white. It danced about his balding head in the early morning breeze. He sat staring past the playground equipment and out over the water. He was wearing thick-lensed eye glasses. His eyes were moist with tears behind them.

  The nanny went over to him, and in her polite British way asked, “Sir, are you all right?”

  The old man nodded.

  “
Aye, aye, sir,” he said.

  11.

  THIS TIME,they’d made a mistake.

  They’d cut all the labels out of his underwear, his pajamas, his robe, and his slippers, and they’d wrapped him in the same presumably stolen DSS TEMPLE blanket, but there was one label they could not remove, and that one was tattooed on the biceps of his left arm:

  Hawes looked through his directory, found the private police number for the U.S. Navy’s Discharged Personnel Center, and placed the call. The woman he spoke to was a chief petty officer named Helen Dibbs. Hawes identified himself, told her what he was looking for, and asked how long it would take her to get back.

  “Is that all you’ve got on him?” she asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “Try to make it difficult, will you? Just the name of aship with a woman’s name under it?”

  “A war, too, don’t forget. Haven’t you got World War II on your computers?”

  “Sure, we do. But gimme a break, huh?”

  “Just run theHanson through from 1941 to 1945. See if anyone in the crew listed Meg as a next of kin.”

  “Sure.”

  “Easy, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “When can you get back?”

  “When I get back,” Dibbs said, and hung up.

  She got back two hours later.

  “Here’s the poop,” she said. “TheHanson was a radar picket ship, named for Robert Murray Hanson, a marine hero who got shot down in the Pacific. She was commissioned in May of 1945, which made my job a little easier since I didn’t have to track her all the way back to Pearl Harbor. It still wasn’t a piece of cake, though; there were three hundred and fifty men and twenty officers aboard her when she sailed for the Pacific. As for Meg…”

  Hawes held his breath.

  “It’s a good thing it wasn’t Mary. Only five men listed Margarets or Marjories as their next of kin, and one of them was later killed in the Korean War, on a minesweep in…”

  “I don’t think Meg’s a form of Marjorie,” Hawes said.

  “Then that leaves three. You got a pencil?”

  A first-class gunner’s mate named Angelo Peretti had listed his mother, Margaret, as next of kin. At the time of his discharge, Peretti’s mother was living in Boston, Massachussetts.

  A lieutenant j.g. named Ogden Pierce had listed his wife, Margaret, as next of kin. He’d lived with her in Baltimore, Maryland.

  A seaman first class, radar striker, named Rubin Shanks had listed his wife, Margaret, as next of kin. They were living at the time of his discharge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  None of them had lived in this city.

  But Meyer and Hawes hit the phone books for all five administrative units of the city, anyway, and for good measure they went through the directories for all the surrounding suburbs; both of the previous victims had beendriven to where they’d been dumped. There was a Victor Peretti in Calm’s Point; he did not know anyone named Angelo Peretti. There was a Robert Pierce in Isola; he did not know any Ogden Pierces.

  In the Elsinore County directory, they found a listing forSHANKS ,RUBIN on Merriwether Lane. When they called the number, a woman named Margaret Shanks said, “What did he do now?”

  They asked if they could come out there to talk to her.

  She said they could.

  At that very moment, another letter from the Deaf Man was being delivered to the muster desk downstairs.

  AND NOW THErhythm reached a frantic pitch, and from where he stood on the tower built of rock, Ankara saw the swell and rise of the multitude and he knew that the fear had turned at last to fury and that the sowing would be good and the reaping plentiful. Listening to the rhythmic stamping of the feet, hearing the voices raised in joyous fury, he smiled up at the four moons and made the sign of the planting.

  “Well, that’s it for sure,” Brown said. “He’s planning something at that rock concert.”

  “Then why does he tell us toburn this one?” Carella asked.

  “Maybe he’s gonna start afire there.”

  “You notice there’s no ‘P.S.’ this time? Nothing about more coming later.”

  “So this is the last one.”

  “So it’s got to be tomorrow.”

  “And it’s got to be the concert.”

  “Where’s that ad?” Carella said.

  They looked at the ad again.

  “The Cow Pasture,” Brown said.

  “Starts at one tomorrow.”

  “Ends at midnight Sunday.”

  “Whatelse starts tomorrow?” Carella asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you don’t think he’sreally telling us, do you?”

  “Maybe not. But even so, we’d better see what kind of security they’ve got at this concert.”

  “Windows Entertainment,” Carella said, and pulled the phone directory to him.

  MARGARET SHANKSwas wearing eyeglasses that looked like the ones that British guy on television wore, whatever his name was, the guy who performed in drag. It was almost impossible to focus on anything but the glasses. Tiny woman with white hair and these big oversized glasses, asking the detectives if they’d like some coffee. This was now close to twelve noon. Sunlight was streaming through the windows in the small living room of the development house. They declined her offer, and then showed her a Polaroid picture they’d taken of the man who’d been dumped in the Silver Harb playground early that morning.

  “Is that your husband?” Hawes asked.

  “Yes, it is. Where is he?”

  “At the moment, ma’am, he’s at Morehouse General Hospital in Isola.”

  “Was he in an accident?”

  “No, ma’am,” Meyer said. “He was left in the playground early this morning. The blues who picked him up took him directly to the hospital.”

  “Is he all right then?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he’s fine.”

  “I worry so about him,” she said, and lowered her eyes behind the outlandish glasses.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Meyer said. “Ma’am, do you have any idea how he might have got to that playground?”

  “None at all. Last week, he drove himself into town and then forgot…”

  “Into the city, do you mean?”

  “No, right here. Fox Hill.”

  “And what happened?”

  “He forgot where he’d parked the car. Got into another man’s car by mistake, had it pushed to a service station…it was a terrible mess. The police came here, I had to straighten it all out, thank God nobody pressed criminal charges. But the man whose car it was said Rubin had damaged it, which he hadn’t, and now he’s suing us, it’s terrible. I haven’t let Rubin drive since, I don’t know how he got into the city.”

  “When was this?” Hawes asked. “When he got into another man’s car?”

  “It was exactly a week ago.”

  “That would’ve made it…”

  “The twenty-seventh,” Meyer said, looking at the calendar in his notebook. “Last Friday.”

  “And you say he hasn’t been driving since?” Hawes said.

  “I hide the keys.”

  “Because you see,” Meyer said, “he was in a robe and pajamas. So he couldn’t have taken the train in, could he? Not dressed like that.”

  “I don’t know how he got in,” Margaret said.

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” Hawes asked.

  Margaret hesitated.

  “Last night,” she said.

  The hesitation had been enough for both detectives. By instinct, they closed in. Old lady or not, they closed in.

  “When last night?” Meyer asked.

  “When…he was getting ready for bed.”

  “Putting on his pajamas?” Hawes asked.

  “Yes”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around ten o’clock.”

  “Getting ready for bed, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?” Meyer asked.


  Working in tandem. They had done this a thousand times before, they would do it a thousand times again. There was something here. They wanted to know what it was.

  “I was…helping him wash and…and brush his teeth. He can’t do those…things too well for himself anymore.”

  “Could he do those things a week ago? When he drove the car into town.”

  “I wouldn’t have let him go if I’d seen him getting in it. It’s difficult to keep track, you know. He…you can’t just keep your eye on someone day and night.”

  “Did you have your eye on him last night?” Hawes asked.

  “Yes, I…try to take care of him the best I can.”

  “But last night he got out of the house somehow, didn’t he?”

  “Well, I…I guess he did. If he’s in the city now, then I guess…I guess he must’ve…must’ve got out somehow.”

  “Youdidn’t drive him to the city, did you?” Meyer asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re sure about that, are you?”

  “Positive.”

  “What time did you go to bed?”

  “Around ten-thirty.”

  “Your husband went to bed at that time, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you sleep in the same room?”

  “No. He snores.”

  “Anybody else have a key to this house?”

  “No.”

  “When did you learn he was missing?”

  “What?”

  “When did you learn he was missing, ma’am? We called you at a little past ten this morning, and you asked what he’d done this time. Did you know he was missing before we called?”

  “Yes, I…did.”

  “When did you find out he was missing, ma’am?”

  “When I…woke up this morning.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around seven.”

  “How’d you learn he was gone?”

  “He wasn’t in his bed.”

  “What’d you do then?”

  “I…”

  Her eyes were beginning to mist behind the ridiculous eyeglasses.

  “What’d you do, ma’am?”